“Ah! cruel wretch, you would not disdain that morsel if it was bloody. Do you want some of this pie? No? Ah! you will not find every day such a treat as the pigeon of that accursed Bohemian. Never shall I forget the service you rendered me, my courageous bird, although your taste for blood went for much in your fine action. But, no matter, Brilliant, no matter; it smells of ingratitude to be looking for the motive of a deed by which we have profited. I ought to have thought of you and given you a fine quarter of mutton for your Christmas feast. But to-morrow I will not forget For you, as for a great many men, the treat makes the festivity, and it is not the holy day or saint they glorify.”
Master Peyrou finished his dinner, sometimes chatting with Brilliant, and sometimes embracing the baron’s bottle.
Twilight was slowly descending upon the town.
The watchman, wrapping himself in his cloak, lit his pipe, and sat down to contemplate the approach of the beautiful winter night, in a sort of meditative beatitude.
Although the night was falling, he again examined the horizon with his telescope, and discovered nothing. Turning his head mechanically on the side of Maison-Forte, with the thought that all hope of seeing the commander arrive was not yet lost, he saw, to his great astonishment, a company of soldiers, commanded by two men on horseback, rapidly marching up the beach toward the house of Raimond V.
He seized his telescope, and, in spite of the gathering darkness, recognised the recorder Isnard, mounted on his white mule. The recorder was accompanied by a cavalier, whose hausse-col, or metal collar, jacket of buff-skin, and white scarf marked him as a captain of infantry.
“What does that mean?” cried the watchman, recalling with alarm the animosity of Master Isnard. “Are they going to arrest the Baron des Anbiez by virtue of an order from the Marshal of Vitry? Ah! I have too much reason to fear it, and what I fear more is the resistance of the baron. My God! how is all this going to end? What a sad Christmas if things are as I fear!”
Greatly disturbed, the watchman stood with his eyes fixed on the shore, although night was now too far advanced to permit him to distinguish any object.
Soon the moon rose bright and clear, flooding the rocks, the bay, the shore, and the castle of Maison-Forte with her brilliant light.
In the distance the city, immersed in fog, showed many a luminous point through the cloudy, vapourous mass, and its sharp-pointed roofs and belfries cut a black silhouette on the pale azure of the sky.